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The Time In Between: A Novel

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Overview

In search of love, absolution, or forgiveness, Charles Boatman leaves the Fraser Valley of British Columbia and returns mysteriously to Vietnam, the country where he fought twenty-nine years earlier as a young, reluctant soldier. But his new encounters seem irreconcilable with his memories.

When he disappears, his daughter Ada, and her brother, Jon, travel to Vietnam, to the streets of Danang and beyond, to search for him. Their quest takes them into the heart of a country that is at once incomprehensible, impassive, and beautiful. Chasing her father's shadow for weeks, following slim leads, Ada feels increasingly hopeless. Yet while Jon slips into the urban nightlife to avoid what he most fears, Ada finds herself growing closer to her missing father -- and strong enough to forgive him and bear the heartbreaking truth of his long-kept secret.

Bergen's marvellously drawn characters include Lieutenant Dat, the police officer who tries to seduce Ada by withholding information; the boy Yen, an orphan, who follows Ada and claims to be her guide; Jack Gouds, an American expatriate and self-styled missionary; his strong-willed and unhappy wife, Elaine, whose desperate encounters with Charles in the days before his disappearance will always haunt her; and Hoang Vu, the artist and philosopher who will teach Ada about the complexity of love and betrayal. We also come to learn about the reclusive author Dang Tho, whose famous wartime novel pulls at Charles in ways he can't explain.

Moving between father and daughter, the present and the past, The Time in Between is a luminous, unforgettable novel about one family, two cultures, and a profound emotional journey in search of elusive answers.

"Beautiful and timely...A sparse and moving meditation on the burden of war across generations."
-San Francisco Chronicle

"Exquisite...With simple sentences, evocative images and subtle insights into elusive emotional states, the words don't merely tell a story; they become poetry."
-The Baltimore Sun

"This is a book of searching....Part war story...part expatriate novel, too, as if A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises had been rolled into one."
-Chicago Tribune

"Brilliant...a literary triumph...As Kurt Vonnegut's memorable "Slaughterhouse-Five" did so brilliantly with the impact of World War II, Bergen's book lives and breathes the Vietnam experience."
-Deseret Morning News (Best Books of 2005)

Best Books of 2005
-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Intense...haunting...a profound meditation on human disconnection."
-Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Spellbinding."
-The Sunday Oklahoman

"Bergen is a master of understatement....[his] elegantly crafted denouement is devastating and powerful, a testament to a writer who senses that some things-passion, violence-can be understood only by traveling outside one's comfort zone and traversing the far edges of reason."
-San Diego Union-Tribune

"A beautifully composed, unflinching and harrowing story. Perhaps the best fiction yet to confront and comprehend the legacy of Vietnam."
-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Affecting...delicate...At the end of this lovely novel, it is Ada and her siblings who are left searching, and the reader along with them."
-The Wall Street Journal

"The Vietnam War has been the inspiration for scores of novels, but Bergen's fifth book is one of the most moving we've encountered."
-Sacramento Bee

"A beautifully crafted meditation on the frustrating search for emotional clarity....[This] simmering novel will mesmerize readers with the intensity of its vision."
-Booklist

"Haunting and dreamlike...The author writes with a certain delicacy of description...[that] preserves the exquisiteness of the Vietnamese culture, lending a unique beauty to the story. Highly recommended."
-Library Journal

"Luminous...In this meditation on the aftereffects of violence and failed human connection, Bergen's austere prose illustrates the arbitrary nature of life's defining moments."

Editorial Reviews

Asking Ellen DeGeneres-sound-alike Anna Fields to narrate this haunting novel of a veteran who goes missing while revisiting Vietnam to make peace with the atrocities he witnessed and committed doesn't initially sound like an inspired idea. However, Fields's narration of this Scotia Bank Giller Prize-winning book (Canada's highest book award) really works. With more than 200 audiobooks to her credit, Fields (aka Kate Fleming, and an Audie Award winner) has a master's touch, and her restrained delivery melds perfectly with Bergen's spare and Hemingwayesque text. Her deadpan delivery works for the narrator's voice as well as it does for Ada Boatman, who travels to Vietnam to find her veteran father, Charles. Fields's only weak note is the voice she uses for the taciturn Charles. As the book shifts between Ada's and Charles's points of view, Field's expertise becomes apparent, especially in her meticulous attention to detail, such as the correct pronunciation of the copious Vietnamese phrases and places in this tale.
-- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of David Bergen

David Bergen is the author of four highly acclaimed novels: A Year of Lesser, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award; See the Child; The Case of Lena S., winner of the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award, and a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction; and, most recently, The Time in Between, winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He is also the author of a collection of short fiction, Sitting Opposite My Brother, which was a finalist for the Manitoba Book of the Year Award.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Random House

Filesize

831.88 KB

Number of Pages

256

eBook ISBN

9780307432681

Awards

  • Libris Awards
  • McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award

Excerpt from: The Time In Between by David Bergen

part one



the room was full of light. from the window they could see the port and the fishing boats and the oil tankers, and at night, when it was clear and calm, the lights of the squid boats far out at sea were like bright stars. In the afternoon, as the sun descended and the air cooled, they left their room and climbed the stairs to the hotel rooftop, where Jon lay on the hammock and read while Ada looked out over the city. There were the broad streets and the cement electrical poles and the palms and far off to the south the tennis courts, where a group of schoolboys in their white shirts and blue shorts played soccer, the bright smack of the ball carrying up to the roof.

The night before, she had dreamed of her father. A clear, pitch-perfect dream in which her father had been smiling from a distance and waving at her to come. "Come," he had cried out, and Ada had toddled forward and fallen on her face. She woke from the dream and heard the fan spinning slowly above her bed, and beyond, through the window, there was a flash of lightning and then thunder. She called out to Jon, said his name several times, but he slept on. She got up and went to the bathroom, and when she came back she stood by the window and watched the night. The neon sign of the hotel sent a glow back onto her face; blue and white and then blue again. She opened the window halfway and leaned out and saw two men walking arm in arm on the street below. They were singing and then talking and then singing again. The men had seemed harmless and the singing was especially musical.

Now, watching the soccer players, Ada turned to Jon and told him about the dream. "I tried to wake you. I hate dreaming about him. Either he disappears or he turns away or I end up cutting off my arms to try to get his attention."

Jon closed his book. He looked at Ada, and then after a long while he said, "I'm glad that I don't dream about him. The lieutenant yesterday, Mr. Dat, said that he couldn't be sure but he thought that we wouldn't find him. I didn't really understand everything he said. He was using this garbled combination of French and Vietnamese and English and he kept saying va, va and oui, oui, and at one point I went va and he smiled and said, 'You speak our language.' He has beautiful hands. His wrists are thin and the nail on his little finger is long. He said Dad's dead." Jon paused and laid the book on the table. "I asked him if he had ever met our father, or seen him around town when he lived here during that month. He looked at me and then he said, 'Not yet.' It was the oddest thing. I wasn't sure if it was a language problem or if he was playing a game. What does that mean? Not yet."

Ada leaned forward and stubbed her cigarette on the cement floor. She said, "You didn't hit on him. I hope you didn't do that." Jon raised an eyebrow. "Did you hear what I said?"

"I heard. He has to make a living and we're not paying him anything and if we did he'd throw clues our way. That's what he was doing, giving you some hope so that you would offer him some financial reward." She waved her hand up at the sky. There was a hazy whitish ring around the sun. "The thing is, Jon, you have to be careful here. How do you know that your proclivities will be tolerated?" She closed her eyes sleepily and then opened them and smiled as if pleased by her question.

He rose and stood over her. He whispered in her ear, "I don't. And I am being careful. Very."

She loved his smell, the smooth skin of his face after he had shaved. "This trip has become a joke," she said. "For three weeks now we've searched uselessly, and here we are, back at this hotel with nothing except what we came with; a tattered photograph of him and our bags and the clothes we wear. We're running out of money."

Jon was dismissive. "Del will put more into the account. She said it wasn't a problem. She just has to ask Tomas."

Ada said, "Haven't you noticed how utterly privileged and fat we are?"

"We?" Jon said. "Fat?"

"I mean the tourists, like us. Those big groups that climb off the buses by the Empire Hotel and then stand around and sweat and wave brochures in front of their faces and call out for each other and then drink iced tea in the air-conditioned caf?."

Jon smiled. "Don't worry, Ada," he said. "You're not like everyone else."

She ignored him and said that she was going over to My Khe. She was hot, and tired of walking around town. There was nothing more to be done. She wanted to swim and asked if he would come with her.